FIRM PRESSING THE MOMENT

God is the God of moments. Moments that bring memories. Memories that bring movement in the soul. Photography captures moments. That bring back memories. However, not all photos are taken with a camera. Prodigiously more are taken with the mind. What a huge innovation when cameras were built into mobile phones. Having our phones always with us, we always have a means in hand to capture any moment. God designed us, humans, with that feature. Our minds freeze a moment of experience in a mental image, a photo that we file into some album in our minds. The thing about photos is that, when we look at them, the moment they’ve frozen in time thaws and releases the memory of that moment. iPhone users will readily understand the reference to “live” photos. Those moments captured with this feature appear in your albums as snapshots, still shots. But, when you firm press on one, a video plays for the duration of time your camera captured the photo. Our minds work the same way. A snapshot of a moment from the past suddenly appears on the home screen of our consciousness. If we pause to look at it, “firm press” it, the action of that moment begins to play a memory before our minds’ eyes. This blog’s musing on moments and memories, I blame on Christmas carols. On a particular Christmas Carol: “O, Holy Night.” I can never hear it without a photo popping up on the screen of my mind. When it does, that still shot of a moment from around fifty years ago unfreezes and a memory plays out in my mind. With sound: It’s Christmas time. My childhood family is going somewhere. Shopping? To church? To see the Christmas lights? That, I don’t remember. Dad’s driving. Mom is in the front next to him. In the back seat, I am sitting right behind Dad. Big sister is behind Mom. Little brother is wedged between us two--probably, already pestering us both. The last door has just been shut. Dad is putting the car into reverse to back down the steep drive of our home onto N. Harrison St. And he is singing. His favorite carol. Loudly. “Oh holy nightttttttttttt, the stars are brightly shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiining…” Even back then, as he sang, I felt something move in my heart. And do again as I recall it. For me, that moment is forever captured. And it always brings that memory. And the memory brings movement in my heart. My blogging all this about photos and moments and memories and movements of the heart is not to share my personal Christmas memories. They are of no real import or interest to others. It’s just, that, first of all, I realized that this is what was happening at the very first Christmas time: The extended family and neighbors of Zacharias and Elizabeth, when they heard and saw the wonder and miracle of John The-Baptist-To-Be, had a moment captured with their minds. As Scripture puts it, “And all they that heard them laid them up in their hearts…” A photo “laid…up in their hearts.” To be taken out of its album again and again. To be contemplated as its memory moved their hearts. Mary, from that first Christmas day, had a mental album filled with more photos than anyone else. It is immediately after Jesus’ birth that Scripture notes she has been snapping photos, capturing those wonderous moments surrounding our Lord’s birth. Although she had to have taken a spate of photos of Jesus’ actual delivery, and her first nursing of her child, it was just after the shepherds' adoring visit that, we are told, she had snapped a mental photo of their worship. “Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.” She kept those things--she captured the snapshot of the moment. She pondered them in her heart--she brought them to the home screen and firm pressed and watched the memory play out. Secondly, I thought this might inspire you to leaf through your mind’s album of photos of moments from Christmases past. No doubt, this season, you have been seeing these photos from the past as they periodically arise inspired by the Yuletide sights and sounds all around us. Take time to firm press them. Watch as the memory is released and plays out. What Christmas carol did you hear? Oh, there it is again. Dad, much younger than I am now, is backing out of the drive singing, “Oh, Holy Night…” I just felt movement in my heart. God is the Giver of moments. A Maker of our moments. The greatest moments of one’s life are those with God in them. The mind, the heart, I should say, captures them. When contemplated, the memory of them plays out. In the mind. And the memory brings movement in our souls. Like we felt in the original moment. Did you feel that? ---Pastor Clifford Hurst